


October Ruminations

by LibraStar96



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: Freeform, Gen, M/M, Songs, Time Shenanigans, character death mention, mammett leaning, more than you can stand, reflections, sometimes you love someone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-16 16:03:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18097589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraStar96/pseuds/LibraStar96
Summary: The thoughts of Emmett Brown in one small eternity





	October Ruminations

**Author's Note:**

> I have loved the Mammett fandom. Not only did it introduce me to the delight of the BTTF movies, but it helped me connect to one of the greatest friends I've ever had and will ever know. I know this fandom has gone quiet now for the most part due to regrettable circumstance. I also find myself moving away from this fandom, not for lack of fondness for it, but because that's just where life is leading. Still, the amazing work of the authors in this fandom accompanied me through college and have brought me no end of happiness. I didn't want to leave without leaving something myself, but I wasn't sure what to do. So much of how I think of these characters has been shaped by the works here that I kept finding echoes of it in what I wrote. I've decided to embrace that for this piece. All of the thoughts these characters and their stories have inspired in me I decided to just go ahead and put down. This is pretty freeform but I hope it's odd in a good way and not in a way that makes it just a big mess of words. If you have any feedback I am always glad to hear from you.  
> Thank you for taking the time to read this and thank you especially to all the amazing writers such as irisbleufic, leaper182, and futurerae who have given me such wonderful stories through the years.

 

 

_Sometimes I wonder, how I spend_

_The lonely nights_

_Dreaming of a song_

-Stardust

Nat King Cole

 

**October 26, 1985**

**Twin Pines Mall**

1:30 AM

 

3

.

.

.

2

.

.

.

1

 

The night Emmett Brown does and does not die, his last thought is of falling.

 

He’s falling back onto asphalt (his head hits a porcelain corner and lightning flashes across his eyes) deflating rapidly, life billowing out of newly punctured holes. He chokes on his own blood, hot and bubbling in his throat (he chokes on the smell of burned rubber, nearly acidic against his parched throat) and a visceral scream of anguish he can do nothing to soothe.

 

He’s leaking across a night sky of tar, time slows for him, a mockery of his dreams (a gentle promise of possibility). He leaks mornings watching as his mother prepared her tea before their morning lessons, leaks the taste of bitter ash (two formulas: one to run, one to destroy), leaks rain from a vicious storm spent deep in his mind (See you in thirty years), leaks the taste of salt and grease and the warmth of vibrating guitar strings (I hope so).

 

We all have an age we were meant to be. An age where we feel settled into life, change forming us into something we are able to call entirely our own. Emmett Brown, never one to adhere to expectation, had three.

 

I

(He’s 18 and his hair is as bright as the slowly growing blaze in his head and he can’t stop _moving_ , can’t slow down for even a second, or it’ll consume him until he’s nothing but a burnt-out husk. His father tries to stifle it, and some days Emmett wishes he could, but oxygen still finds its way in through his eyes and ears. His fingers burn, hands flaming with intent. He needs to vent this, but he’s buried deep down in the earth under law books, disapproval, bricks, and mortar, and he knows sooner or later, destruction will come.

 

And oh, didn’t the poisoned clouds of his desperation blast his soul to glass?)

 

II

(He’s thirty-five and full of hairline fractures, starting in his palms and culminating high on his head, Lichtenberg figures decorating his skull and now he isn’t burning. He’s crackling. Impossible energy, fueling impossible plans, leading to impossible solutions. What does it matter? What is impossible in the face of dreams materializing whole and perfect from his mind to the tangible? He creates fires now. The walls of his classroom are caked in soot, and waves of heat rise from blueprints pinned to cork board. He creates fires but finds, to his dismay, that once they’re there, he can’t seem to contain them.

His house smolders.

His mind crackles.)

 

III

(He’s sixty-five and he’s not just lightning, he’s the brewing storm. The air he breathes is thick with ozone, a gale billowing through his brain as it does across the hot, dry ground. The same way it does around the metal of the DeLorean. He’s so close. One more day. A phone call in the morning. Pinball machines and pride are his price.)

 

There on the cusp. Three men. Three legs of the flux capacitor all connecting to a point in the middle, every path leading to (branching from) a single spot in the center…

 

At the center…

 

(Your Friend… Marty)

 

The night Emmett Brown does and does not die, his last though is of love.

 

He feels the impact of it like close range bullets against Kevlar and he’s breathless and falling (endlessly falling).

 

Eyes like a pale winter sky meet his, prodding at the layers of paper and expectation and soil smothering him (he’s so alone, he can’t breathe through the smoke of his own mind). He doesn’t notice, until an infinity later, how those eyes gently changed him from a volcano to a blacksmiths forge (what the difference between destruction and creation is anymore, he cannot say, cannot differentiate discovery from ruin).

 

A hand reaches out to take his and he has a conductor. Energy travels through chests and up arms and out rapidly moving mouths, words bouncing faster than atoms He stands in the rain and screams with delight, dancing along the remaining flames of a future he can’t wait to arrive at, (he sits, cocooned in electricity and flames). He glows. Cool fingers brush over the cut on his head, cooling his fever, creating a circuit. Torn paper freezes his coat pocket, coaxing with a whispered desperate plea.

 

He stands, heart pounding as wind whips around him, dream in grasp. A lighthouse stands next to him, illuminating the path ahead.

He will always be here, just like this.

 

Breath is gone now (hot enough from his lungs for balloons, for paper lanterns over black water) thought is melting away (what year-where-why-why-why).

 

Follow that voice (I have to tell you something about the future). Trace the looping letters with your fingers until the ink threatens to leave the paper entirely stain your fingers with all the woe from Pandora’s Box (always listen to the melody of a battered acoustic, a helpless Eurydice). A warm smile brushed against every recollection worth keeping in mind. Recognition when he had given up all hope of it.

 

Go home again.

 

He will live. (don’t leave me).

Distant sounds of an engine gunning it. A crash. (88 miles per hour-minute-second)

How many gigawatts to heal a dying man? (I figured…what the hell?)

 

There’s the sound of shoes stepping on glass (the distant rumble of a skateboard in the purple dusk of twilight). Shaking hands against his shoulders, roll him over (he’s so cold but the little stars that climb are still hot in the heavens). Warm, gasping breath fluttering against his face for a second (eternity opens in front of him, beckoning with a song that will not die).

 

(No coming back now).

 

Contact he needed. Contact he could never seek, only keep.

Contact-

His heart starts.

(His lungs burn)

 

(Dreaming of a song)

 

1

.

.

.

2

.

.

.

3

 

1:30 AM

**Lone Pines Mall**

**October 26, 1985**


End file.
